All Rise...

The Charge

Opening Statement

The Emmanuelle/Emanuelle franchise has produced many films over the years.
These are three of them.

What, you want more from me?

Facts of the Case

Emanuelle in Bangkok (1977) Emanuelle (Laura Gemser) goes
to Bangkok and Morocco and has a lot of sex.

Emanuelle Around the World (1977) Emanuelle (Laura
Gemser) goes to various spots around the world and has a lot of sex.

Sister Emanuelle (1981) Emanuelle (Laura Gemser), now a
nun in a convent school, watches over a naughty student (Monica Zanchi,
Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals) who has a lot of sex.

The Evidence

It seemed like a good idea at the time. "Hey, free softcore Seventies
porn," I said to myself. "Hot chicks getting naked. I like hot naked
chicks! And all I have to do is review the films." What could possibly go
wrong?

Dozens of agonizing minutes later, I can tell you what's wrong: actually
watching these films in their entirety with a critical eye is excruciating. Yes,
Laura Gemser is stunningly hot, and it doesn't take much in these films to get
her clothing off. But that's all these films are: excuses to have Gemser and the
other females in the cast remove their clothing—and pretty poor excuses at
that.

First, a bit of history. Back in the 1950s, a French woman named Marayat
Rollet-Andriane, under the pen name Emmanuelle Arsan, wrote an
"autobiography" entitled Emmanuelle, sometimes referred to by
the alternate title The Joys of a Woman. (She later had a small acting
role in The Sand Pebbles, of all
things…) The book, about a young woman's erotic romp through life, didn't
take off until the mid-Sixties, when it became a French cult hit. In the
Seventies, a film version of Emmanuelle, starring Dutch actress Sylvia
Kristel as the eponymous subject, was an unexpected success. Despite being what
censors of the time considered "pornographic," the film nonetheless
played in regular moviehouses, not in seedy porno grindhouses (like, say,
Debbie Does Dallas). Most critics would point to Emmanuelle as the
first mainstream film in the genre we now know as "softcore porn." Its
success, as well as some copyright mistakes that left the Emmanuelle name
unprotected, spawned a huge series of follow-up Emmanuelle films that continue
to this day.

Never ones to miss a chance to get in on the action, the Italians knocked
off the Emmanuelle films with their own "Emanuelle" (one
"m") films. The most notable and successful of these knock-offs were
what are known as the "Emanuelle Nera" pictures ("Black
Emanuelle" in English) that starred former model Laura Gemser, named after
the first film in the series. ("Black" isn't really the best
translation of the Italian; in English, "black" connotes an ethnic
status, whereas the Italian meaning is really more like
"dark-skinned." Gemser is, in fact, Indonesian, and not of African
descent.) The bulk of these films were directed by Joe D'Amato, the so-called
"Ed Wood of Italy." So right there you know what you're getting
into.

The first two films in this three-disc box set from Severin
Films—Emanuelle in Bangkok and Emanuelle Around the
World—are simply atrocious. And not just atrocious, but offensive as
well—not because of the ample nudity and sex, but because each presents a
rape (or rapes) for prurient purposes. I just don't cotton to that. Emanuelle
in Bangkok is probably the worst offender, because not only is Emanuelle
raped, but it's implied that she gets turned on by being raped. Excuse me while
I take a long, hot shower to cleanse me of having seen that. The rapes in
Emanuelle Around the World are more violent and disturbing, but at least
the film doesn't imply that "women like to be raped" the way
Emanuelle in Bangkok does.

Even without the rapes, there would be little to enjoy in either film save
for the beautiful naked women. Again, Emanuelle in Bangkok is the worse
of the two. Its plot would be charitably described as incoherent; if I
wanted to be really mean, I'd describe it as "being written by someone who
was both retarded and brain damaged." It begins abruptly, ends abruptly,
and staggers along without rhyme or reason in between. Emanuelle just does
stuff, and there's an archeologist who may be her boyfriend, and she loses her
camera, and there's a bunch of sex. That's about it. Emanuelle Around the
World at least has a semi-coherent narrative involving Emanuelle's
investigation of a white slavery ring, but it's still an amateurish and
poorly-told story even by porn standards.

After sitting through these two crapburgers, the merely subpar Sister
Emanuelle is like watching The
Godfather. It has an actual plot, and you can actually follow the story
reasonably well. Oh sure, it's still a classic exploitation flick, what with the
sexual nuns, naughty Catholic school girls, and hot girl-on-girl action, but at
least it couches all of that in an honest-to-Pete story. The main flaw
here is…there isn't enough naked Gemser. I mean, she's not here for her
acting ability. She's here because she's a fantastic-looking woman. Hiding her
in a nun outfit—not exactly the most flattering garment ever created by
mankind—for 90% of the film sort of defeats the whole purpose of the film.
Fortunately, the slack is picked up by Zanchi, whom the box describes as a
"Kirsten Dunst look-alike." Actually, she does look a lot like
Dunst, so Sister Emanuelle should prove desirable for the
Spiderman fetishists out there, I guess.

Picture and sound quality are pretty much in line with the quality of the
films. Bangkok and Around the World look and sound terrible. The
latter especially suffers from extensive print damage and scratching; it's a
Super-8 quality image at best. The mono tracks accurately reproduce the
poorly-dubbed English and Italian dialog, and that's about it. A handful of
extras are provided, the best of the lot being the interview with composer Nico
Fidenco on the Around the World disc. The only real
non-naked-chick-related strength of these Emanuelle films is their soundtracks.
They're cheesy and very Seventies, but they're downright catchy, and the lyrics
of some of the songs are so laughably stupid that they wind up being
entertaining. Fidenco puts his work into the context of Italian cinema of the
time. It's definitely a more scholarly extra than you'd expect here. The
interview with the late Joe D'Amato, although of dubious technical quality, is
unique because (a) he didn't give many interviews, and (b) he gave even fewer
interviews in English. He seems a decent sort, but you don't get a lot of
perspective on the films from him. The "deleted scenes" on the
Sister Emanuelle are snippets of harder-core action from the film,
presumably edited out for European ratings purposes.

The Rebuttal Witnesses

Let's be honest—the real purpose of these films isn't to tell a
compelling story, or (unlike the French Emmanuelle films) to attempt to make
some sort of social statement about the position of women in society. It's to
deliver as much female flesh in as many erotic situations as possible. By that
standard, mission accomplished. Gemser is simply stunning, with or without
clothing. The other female characters—and if you see a woman under the age
of 40 in these films, you can be relatively sure that you'll see them naked
before too long—are easy on the eyes as well. The sex, save for the
raping, is pretty well shot; it's much more realistic than the extended
"GNAW IT VOOP" sessions (as Judge Lineberger has dubbed
them—see, e.g., Taylor
Wane's Erotic Games) you see in contemporary softcore stuff. However, the
cuts here tend to be too quick, as opposed to sex scenes in current films, which
often drag way beyond the point of tolerance. Plus, the terrible quality of the
visuals tempers one's enjoyment of the female forms on display.

Closing Statement

Laura Gemser is gorgeous. But that wears off quick, and all you're left with
is more Italian crap than you'd find in a Roman sewer. I can't for the love of
God figure out why anyone would want to actually own this box set…but if
you do, here it is. Enjoy.

The Verdict

I'd declare these films guilty and send everyone to prison, but the thought
of possibly having to review Emanuelle and the Warden or Emanuelle,
Confessions of a Prison Whore in the future is too terrifying. I declare a
miscarriage of justice.